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HAMBURG PORT OF IMMIGRANT DREAMS
Ballin-Stadt Emigration Museum Hamburg

Many families can trace their ancestry to the successive waves of immigration from Europe. Seeking religious freedom, escape from famine, war or persecution, the chance for riches or just the opportunity for something better. Before 1850 much of the immigrant ships which carried the hopefuls from Germany embarked from ports in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Bremen. In 1847 the HAPAG shipping line “Hamburg American Packet Company” was founded in the northern Germany port city of Hamburg. Convenient to reach by the Elbe River from the east and by railroad, Hamburg rapidly became the most important emigration port in Germany from 1850 to 1934 and the HAPAG line one of the most successful shipping companies in the world, renamed the Hamburg-America Line in 1893.

Between 1846 and 1857 more than one million Germans emigrated to the United States, mostly small farmers from Southern Germany and farm laborers from East Germany and by 1814, over five million had left, most on ships of the Hamburg America Line (Hamburg Amerika Linie). In 1901 the shipping line opened an “Immigration City”, a complex of buildings with lodging and dining halls to handle the rush from Eastern Europe, Poland and Russia with room of 5,000 immigrants at a time in its Immigration Halls (Auswandererhallen) waiting for the next ship to America, even including a synagogue for the many Jewish immigrants escaping the Czarist pogroms of Russia.

In 2007 three reconstructed buildings of the former Immigration Halls of the Hamburg-America Line re-opened as a museum exhibition dedicated to this past and named for the company’s managing director Albert Ballin who guided it. The BallinStadt Emigration Museum Hamburg located on Vedel Island in the harbor complex of the Elbe River (See Hamburg Harbor) with an S-Bahn station at the Wilhelmsburger Bridge nearby will present photographic displays and records of Hamburg’s part in the immigration story, in both its hopeful and darker sides. For those seeking their ancestral history from a European past whose ancestors left Europe from Poland, the Baltic states, Russia and even Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland between 1836 until 1934, may discover relatives passed through the portals of the HAPAG “Auswandererstadt”.

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For travelers on a family roots genealogy journey retracing the steps of European ancestry, a stop in Hamburg may be one of the waypoints. To research whether Hamburg is the route taken you can contact Link to Your Roots a Emigration Research Service operating in cooperation with the City of Hamburg and the Ballinstadt Museum. Passenger lists are available online for the period between 1890 and 1910. They also provide researchers who will work with you directly for records before 1890 and after 1910 or for more complicated inquiries. Germany’s other major port for immigration after 1830 Bremerhaven also has an Emigration Center with information of historic and current emigration and offering research services for following family roots. For Rhineland Palatine emigration from the mid 1600's to 1700’s see (Wandering Immigrants). © Bargain Travel Europe

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Ballinstadt Immigration Museum
Bremerhaven Emigration Center

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